What is Personality according to Psychology?

What is the definition of personality in the field of psychology and how does it describe us?

Many times we hear people comment about others: "he has a lot of personality", or "he lacks personality". But do we really know what personality is? First of all, we must differentiate between having a lot of character and what personality really is.

Personality is a hypothetical construct that we infer from people's behavior. It comprises a series of characteristic traits of the individual, as well as including his or her way of thinking, being or feeling. Personality psychology is concerned with the study of personality.

Personality: what is it?

Personality encompasses a series of common characteristics included in its different definitions. It is a hypothetical construct inferred from the observation of behavior. That is, we think that "X" person behaves in "X" way because that is the way his or her personality is, or because that is the way he or she is.

Such a construct does not imply value connotations, but rather it gathers a series of relatively stable and consistent elements over time, called traits. In addition, it includes other elements such as cognitions includes other elements such as cognitions, motivations and affective states..

Personality encompasses both the overt behavior and the private experience of the person (his thoughts, desires, needs, memories...). It is something distinctive and proper to each person, because, although there are some "personality types", the truth is that each person is unique, as is his or her personality.

On the other hand, it reflects the influence on behavior of psychological and Biological elements of experiences. The purpose of personality is the successful adaptation of the individual to the environment.

Definition

There are many definitions of personality, and one of the most one of the most comprehensive is that of Bermúdez (1996), who defines it as a "relatively stable organization of structural and functional characteristics, innate and acquired under the special conditions of their development, which make up the peculiar and defining team of behavior with which each individual faces different situations".

We should not confuse this definition of personality with the phrases we use every day, such as "Fulanita has a lot of personality" or "Fulanito has no personality". Although both ideas can be related, they are not exactly the same.

When we use these phrases we are referring to (or imagining) people with a strong character or with people with a strong character or with very clear ideas.In other words, we use personality as a synonym for character. Even more nuanced, we would see that character is a more biological or innate construct; it would be like the way in which a person habitually reacts to a situation.

On the other hand, when we speak of someone "without personality", we think of people with unclear ideas, with lack of initiative, who can be influenced or even dependent. In other words, we attribute not having a personality to the lack of certain characteristics that a person does not always have to have in order to be considered as having one personality or another.

All this is part of common language or verbal expressions.We cannot consider it wrong as such, but it is true that it does not coincide with the concept of personality that we are describing here.

Thus, we see how personality is actually much more than "to have or not to have character", and that it also encompasses many characteristics of the person: it includes the way he/she thinks, feels, communicates, lives, feels emotions, etc.

Personality psychology

This discipline is in charge of studying the effect of individual differences in personality on behavior.. It is made up of three types of theoretical models:

1. internalist models

They establish that behavior is basically determined by personal variables, which constitute a valid predictor of such behavior. a valid predictor of such behavior.

Situationist models

They consider that the causes of behavior are external to the individual (mechanistic paradigm). Emphasis is placed on behaviorwhich is important in itself and is the product of learning.

3. Interactionist models

Determine that behavior is the result of interaction. between situational and personal variables. These models overcome the reductionism of the previous ones; they are a "mixture" of the two.

Traits

Personality makes it possible to build one's own identity and to adapt to the world and the environment. It characterizes people and makes them unique. It includes both positive and negative traits (or rather, socially considered as such), such as empathy, solidarity, anger, optimism, pessimism, cheerfulness, moodiness, sincerity, honesty, rancor, etc.

We can also speak of personality "traits"; the set of common traits constitute the different personality types. Thus, we can speak of people with depressive tendencies, dependent people, and countless others.

In other words, personality is made up of the traits that define a person. This is quite stable over time, as well as transituationally (in different situations), although it is true that with nuances, since there are situations that are more extreme than others, and that can lead the person to behave in ways never thought of or never experienced before.

Personality disorders

When the person's traits are extreme, dysfunctional, normatively deviant or maladaptive, the person is considered to have a personality disorder.When the person's traits are extreme, dysfunctional, normatively deviant or maladaptive, the person is considered to have a personality disorder (the diagnostic criteria of the reference manuals should always be consulted).

These traits should be stable over time, as well as predominant; in addition, they usually generate discomfort in the person.

In the DSM-IV-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) a total of 10 Personality Disorders are described and characterized.